Why being careful is such an important mindset when working with SQL and databases.

At the Boston Public Schools, certain processes need to be run at particular times of the school year. There’s a couple of specific windows of time where we print choice forms for students. There’s a few… Read more

A continuation of the data dictionary discussion with information about how the documentation is done.

Today I’m going to continue discussing the data dictionary tables we’ve set up at the Boston Public Schools. The SQL for creating the tables and inserting the baseline example records is in my previous data…Read more

A discussion why having a staging environment with data that mirrors production is vital to tracking down issues.

Being able to replicate production bugs is highly important. A key aspect to this is having data that is similar or [preferably] identical in a non-production environment where the issue can be… Read more

A discussion about nightly populated tables and how they have reduced SQL Server load.

What’s more important – speed or data accuracy/quality when generating reports? There’s no definitive correct answer to this question as there’s often a trade-off between the two. In many cases a cost/benefit analysis needs to be… Read more

A discussion of how views give a more denormalized means for querying against normalized tables.

Ad-hoc reports are frequently requested at the Boston Public Schools. Generally each request is different but similar to ones previously made. To the degree that such requests are unique, there’ll always be work involved in… Read more

Thank you to everyone reading this site - Please enjoy your stay!

HelpWithSQL has hit double digits in posts! I hope everyone visiting the site finds the content and examples useful and interesting. The site has quickly evolved over the last couple weeks and it will continue to do so.… Read more